The invention relates generally to creation of Internet web pages, and more specifically to an automated system for creating web pages from other types of data.
As personal computer use and access to the Internet have become increasingly common, computers have become more widely relied upon for communication. The Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, operate around the clock and allow nearly instantaneous worldwide distribution of information. Businesses provide product information, customer support, and ordering capability via the Internet; e-mail is widely used for personal and business communication via the Internet in place of telephone or postal mail; and discussions relating to a wide variety of specific topics are conducted in Internet-based discussion groups. As technology and access to the Internet continue to increase, it is reasonable to expect that communication via the Internet will continue to increase in popularity and the methods in which the Internet is used to communicate will continue to expand.
Web pages or websites comprising a part of the World Wide Web (WWW) are perhaps the most common means of posting information for mass viewing or for providing services such as e-commerce ability to the public at large. Web pages are defined via a markup language that can be transmitted via the Internet or other network to website users. These users execute web browser applications that interpret the markup language information and render web pages on the user computer systems. Markup languages such as HTML allow presentation of text, graphics, menus, tables, and other useful structures to users via the network connections that link web page servers and user client systems running web browser applications. Furthermore, because a web page is typically reloaded each time a user views the page, distributing updated data via a web page requires only that a single copy of the web page stored on a server be updated. Creating or updating a web page does not require physical access to the server, but can be done from any other Internet-connected computer in the world.
Creating web pages originally consisted of hand-coding the markup language information that defined the web page, much like hand-writing a computer program using a computer language. Because this required knowledge of the markup language and careful attention to syntax and structure, and because use of a language to create a visual display is not particularly intuitive for most people, graphical markup language editors have become a common tool. These tools allow manipulation of elements of a web page in a manner that resembles current word processing applications, using a methodology known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG). This allows a web page designer to manipulate web page elements as the web page rendering is viewed, somewhat simplifying design.
In organizations with a large base of users wishing to publish content to the same web site, even tools such as graphical markup language editors may not be efficient enough for a web master to maintain such a large website alone. Multiple webmasters can be employed to handle different aspects of website management in such a large system. This requires not only employing more people, but also coordinating management and design of the larger website. A need was felt for tools that would enable users to update web page content directly without requiring knowledge of markup language coding, graphic web page design tools, or coordination of desired updates with one or more web site designers.
One solution involves the use of common gateway interface (CGI) scripts, which enable a user to enter information into a web page text field and pass the data onto Perl or C programs that can then convert the entered information into an HTML markup language file. However, this tends to produce simplistic web pages that have very little flexibility in formatting or different types of content. Changing the content or functionality of such as system typically requires rewriting the underlying program code, which is a time-consuming and difficult task.
What is desired is a system facilitating web site creation for users who do not know or desire to learn a suitable markup language or graphic web page design tools, and that allows both flexibility in structure and design and self-management of a user""s web content.
The present invention provides a system of creating Internet web content. In some embodiments, non-web content is received in a web content creation module, which automatically creates web content from the non-web content. In select further embodiments, an organizational database is then updated with information comprising web content structure information associated with the created web content, incorporating the web content into the web site.